Frank Santoro wants you to think about comics in a new way:
There’s often too much emphasis on reading a comic like a novel when really it should be discussed like a painting or a sculpture. Far from dismissing these “out there” comics… I found myself simply hoping to discuss them and appreciate them better, and to do that I think a broader approach has to be encouraged, towards a less conservative definition of comics… I’ve always felt that all comics are inherently narrative because of the form that the book takes. For that matter a single image, an abstract painting, for example, is often narrative. Jackson Pollock’s paintings are narrative — you can follow him, the story of him working by the lassos of color — and the same is true even with the color field abstractionists like Frankenthaler. It’s just a broader range, a greater bandwidth for inventing narrative.
It’s part of a larger post about mini-comics from SPX, but it’s something that particularly stood out to me. Thoughts?
November 7th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
What annoyed me in the excerpt you chose is that Santoro suggests we study and think about comic books the way we do paintings and sculptures. And this, to him, seems like a more intelligent/superior method.
Instead, I propose we study and analyze them like comic books instead of simply as literature or visual art. Comic books are both and any suggestion that the BEST way or CORRECT way to study them is as one of the two is preposterous and backward thinking.
I’ll stop now since I think this has been discussed ad nauseum in other places, and with much more thought in it that what I’m giving now.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I don’t suggest that any approach is superior. I simply would like to understand comics of all stripes in a broader sense. And honestly I subscribe to discussing comics AS comics. I myself am searching for a language with which to discuss these new works I saw at SPX. I think there’s room for a different approach. Is that really backwards thinking?
November 8th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
After reading the article I certainly don’t think you were trying to do that, and your post itself suggests you’re working with quite a complex vocabulary concerning comics. You’ve things pretty well categorized, but your post also reminded me how many comic books there are out there, and how confusing it can be to discuss many or most of them in a productive manner.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
It’s true, it is confusing. And I really am trying to be productive. It’s hard not to be divisive in these matters. Much of it is taste. There are alot of comics readers who aren’t interested in different “readings” or interpretations of comics. That’s fine with me. I read countless straight ahead narrative comics but I know how to discuss these comics. There is a shared language with references to other comics, styles, storylines. But at this SPX I found it difficult to describe some minicomics even to my friends who are well versed in what’s out there these days. I’m trying to figure out how to best discuss these “new” works and am doing it publicly on the ComicsComics blog so that the dialogue that ensues might help define a shared language that we can all sort of agree upon.